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3 Ways to Beat the Nanowrimo Half-Time Funk

Whether it’s your first or your tenth Nanowrimo, the pressure is still the same. In between work, school, homework, housework and crying babies, you somehow need to pump out 1600 plus words of legible, coherent text a day, every day for the whole of November.

It’s not that easy. Things happen, good and bad, that interfere with your schedule. Days pass when your fingers never touch the computer and while that’s okay in the early days, by the middle of the month, these can be disastrous. And for some reason, once you’re 10k words behind, the writer’s block problems start to gather. This story doesn’t make sense. It’s going in the wrong direction. There are too many inconsistencies…. And there’s a party tonight.

And yes, if you don’t finish Nanowrimo, it’s not the end of the world. But if you do want to do it and you are flailing, I’ve got 3 tips to help you out.

1. You’ve lost the plot
It’s so easy to write when you know where you’re going, but as soon as you go off track you’ve only got two options. One, write around to bring the story back or – heaven forbid – delete. Okay, no one should be deleting more than say, 500 words ever for Nanowrimo. The month is about writing not editing and it’s certainly not about deleting. So what do you do? Simple, jump ahead. If you know your story, jump ahead to the next scene or chapter and leave a big, to be continued hole, in the place where you’re stuck. Next month or next year, you can go back and look at where it went off track. Until then, you can enjoy the sensation of moving through your book towards the conclusion of the story.

Okay, that’s not my advice, that comes from Raymond Chandler and while tons of people will laugh at that kind of approach to writing, it fits perfectly to Nanowrimo. This is your one month of hard-hitting, quick-fire writing. If your story sucks, do something dramatic to rekindle your own interest. Let one of the characters be the only witness to murder, break a leg, develop an obsession for one of the others, anything. If your story has turned into a passed out mid-Victoria lady at a dinner party, give her a slap and stick something disgusting under her nose to wake her up.

However, if the process of writing bores you, I’m sorry, it can be boring sometimes but you just have to get through it. My trick here was Treacle Toffee. November is Bonfire Night season in the UK and Treacle Toffee is made for November 5th. I took a whole tin of that sticky stuff and let myself have a piece only when I was actively writing. The sugar rush is pretty intense, but thinking burns calories really fast (Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself). And it’s like that gummy bear trick for getting kids to read textbooks. You want the treats, so deal with the boredom!

3. You don’t have time
Really, 1666 words on a subject that you know explicitly because it’s in your head? I’m kidding. I know it’s tough. While some people can do this in about half an hour for others it takes three. But the middle of November is not the time to quit. Why would you? All those positive feelings you’ll get from completing will be turned into feelings of defeat. Instead, you should forget the 1666 number and write to your heart’s content. If it’s a Monday night and you’re on 2k at 10pm, keep going if you’re on a role. It’s an investment for all those days when you can’t get or don’t have time to get past 500.

Bonus point. Forget the idea that it’s meant to be fun.
I’m dead serious here. So many good things are dressed up as being fun to get people to participate, but like the gym or going on a diet, why not fess-up and admit, the fun part is the having done it part.

Writing is work. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.